The Mutual Admiration Society(27)
“She’s comin’,” I squat back down and tell Birdie. “Quick. Get down on your tummy and back out very slowly, because if she catches us, she’ll . . .” I don’t want to rile her up worse than she already is, but what choice do I have? “She’s gonna rat us out to Louise and ya remember what she told you this morning she was going to do if we got caught outside of the house doing something we’re not supposed to?”
Luckily, a small part of Birdie’s small brain does recall again that our mother threatened to take away her precious Three Musketeers bars, because she doesn’t have to think long and hard about the answer to my question the way she does most.
She lickety-split drops to her belly, looks up at me with her run-of-the-mill blue eyes that have turned a steelier gray than the barrel of a gangster’s gun, and says outta the side of her suddenly gone old-timey mouth, “Well, whatcha waitin’ for, toots? An engraved invitation? Let’s blow this pop stand.”
8
UH-OH
Birdie and me are snaking our way through the familiar gravestones at our home away from home on our way to the biggest burial joint in the whole cemetery, which belongs to Mr. Gilgood. When he was still alive and kicking, the richest man in the neighborhood lived in a house that does not look like all the rest of our wooden houses. Mr. McGinty, who knows a lot about other things besides digging graves because he has a World Book Encyclopedia of his very own in his shack at the cemetery where Birdie and me visit him all the time, told me that Mr. Gilgood’s place was so different because it was built by somebody name of Frank Lloyd Wright, who I think was one of the famous flying brothers because that house on 67th St. has always looked a little like an airliner to me.
I can only guess who or what my sister is thinking about on our trip to the scene of the crime—probably Daddy and Charlie and chocolate-covered cherries—but when we scoot past one of the graves that’s blanketed in going-away presents on our way over there, what I’m wondering about for the umpteenth time is if I’m being a dope who is ignoring opportunity knocking loudly at my door.
I make an exception when it comes to the boxes of the Stover’s candy that Evelyn Melman leaves once a week on Mr. Lindley’s grave—why the wife of the hardware store owner is sweet on this dead plumber who got burned up in a house fire is one of life’s little mysteries that I wouldn’t mind solving when things die down around here. (Joke!) But if I didn’t have the rule to steal only from people who have and never from people who have not, I could make such a killing at Louie’s Pawn Shop with the parting gifts that grievers leave on the graves of their departed loved ones. Woolly teddy bears in vests, Christmas wreaths with silver bells that I can hear tinkling through the crack in our bedroom window at that time of year, flags waving on the Fourth of July, crocheted afghans during April showers—I guess to warm their departed’s bones—and until recently, many of the tombstones had real gold St. Christopher medals hanging offa them. About the only person I can think of who has left something not so nice on a grave is Mrs. Eunice Hartfield. She propped a laminated picture on the tombstone of her deceased hubby that had a cigarette hole burned into the spot on his chest where his heart should’ve been after she heard at the church knitting circle that her best friend, Mrs. Dorothy Osbourn, was an even best-er friend with Mr. John Hartfield, so I guess that proves the famous saying “Hell hath no fury like a woman scored on” is true once and for all.
And, of course, the other thing I can’t help but think about when my sister and me make our way to Mr. Gilgood’s luxurious mausoleum is that we’re breaking Louise’s #1 Commandment—The Finley Sisters Shalt Not Visit the Cemetery.
Far back as I can remember, our mother hasn’t wanted us to hang out here, but she’s gotten even stricter since the day of our father’s pretend funeral and burial that she wouldn’t let Birdie and me go to. Because no matter how hard the Shore Patrol looked for Daddy’s body after he fell over the side of The High Life the afternoon we went fishing together, they never found him. Not in Lake Michigan, and he never washed up on one of the beaches, either. So that’s why his coffin that got carried out of the hearse by the six men named Paul was full of rocks and not Daddy’s bones.
“Losing your father is a cross the three of us will have to bear, girls, but life goes on. Time heals all wounds,” is the kind of bull hockey that Louise preaches to Birdie and me about every day. “We need to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps.”
But I guess, like Mr. McGinty taught me, there are times that bull hockey isn’t always bad. “Honesty is the best policy, Tessie, but it’s got no business attending a funeral,” is what he said. That’s because our friend knows that if those sad people who’ve lost their most precious one were told the hopeless truth, which is that once they’re done being numb they’ll start feeling all the time like they got the worst thirst that nothing can quench and know deep inside of themselves that they’re gonna spend every day of the rest of their lives looking for something precious they’re never gonna find, no matter how many times the sun rises and sets, that would be pretty much the same as telling them, You’ll never hear your sweet one’s voice, hug them, and laugh at their jokes again, so why don’t you save yourself a lot of wear and tear and jump into that grave with them and get it over with?